Answer to the Bomb-Fairy? Please give me your thoughts

[Oliver]

Maybe it´s proofable if there where bombs
or not. William Rodriguez talked (and (s)ome
others i dont remind) about the elevator doors,
wich were blown open.

Working 20 Years in the Building, William and
other people should remind which specific
elevator doors were blown.

If not all elevators did reach entireley to the
floors where the planes hit, these doors
should´nt have been blown during the
fireball walking down the shafts, am i right?

It would be helpfull to have blueprints or
someone who knows the towers like Willi.

Regards,
Oliver

[Oliver]

No one? Sorry for bumbing

[kevin]

I responded in the other thread. I'll repost here.

[kevin]

Originally Posted by Oliver

Maybe it´s proofable if there where bombs
or not. William Rodriguez talked (and (s)ome
others i dont remind) about the elevator doors,
wich were blown open.

If not all elevators did reach entireley to the
floors where the planes hit, these doors
should´nt have been blown during the
fireball walking down the shafts, am i right?

Not all elevators served all floors but the shafts went from top to bottom. The only floors the shafts could've been topped off at were the maintenance floors and I doubt they did.

Further the shafts were enclosed in 2 layers of drywall, NOT concrete or other material. This means when the plane plowed into the core it probably blew the walls off all the shafts in the area it hit (if they had doors or not). At this point fireballs could go down any shaft and blow out doors on any floor (or the walls if there were no floors).

Here are some typical floor plans. I believe the big shafts are the express elevators you could take to a sky lobby, where you would catch the local elevator to the exact floor you needed. The smaller shafts are the local elevators. Note by flipping the restroom locations on each floor you can expose different sets of elevators to exit on that floor.

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by kevin

Not all elevators served all floors but the shafts went from top to bottom. The only floors the shafts could've been topped off at were the maintenance floors and I doubt they did......

Hello Kevin,

so any shaft did go from the top to the bottom, am
i right? Is this for sure?

I swear i´ve seen an computer generated animation
in one of the 9/11 movies out there with the elevators
shown and explained, but i don´t know wich it was.

There must be some very logic proof to this bomb
thing. Please keep this in mind if you read some
stuff about the elevators. I try my best to get further
information.

[kevin]

technically not all the shafts had to go all the way up. 2/3 may have only gone part way, but I'm not sure they constructed it that way. Below is a vertical representation. Notice that the building is divided in 3rds and then 4 banks of elevators serve each 3rd. They could've topped off the elevator shafts for the ones serving lower floors in that section, but I don't think they did.

The reason I don't think they did is because I think they located all the elevator equipment on the technical services floors and the elevator cables would've needed to go from that floor to the elevators. If they had topped off the elevators the equipment would've needed to be located on various floors and special power run to those floors and maintenance done on the occupied floors annoying the occupants.

They also could've sealed the shafts at the technical floors, but again I don't think they did just because I don't see a reason they would (they probably did have drywall around the shafts to maintain air pressure).

[Oliver]

Thank you very much, Kevin.

I´ve found that video about the shafts and
also a bigger version of the illustration on
wikipedia

Illustration:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Arrangment.jpg

The video was: Rise and Fall of an American Icon

Quote:

"The Tube design was an innovated concept, but
in practise, the elevators would have taken to
much space. Seeking a solution, designers devided
each tower into three parts, or zones. Each with
it´s own skylobby. People would be able to get
to work by taking an express, and then a local
elevator"

"---to much space---" This pretty sounds like the
local elevator shafts did not went all the way from
the top to the bottom.

[Oliver]

General Question:

Who´s the most familiar person in here
regarding the the two towers and it´s
inner structure?

[Pardalis]

Originally Posted by Oliver

General Question:

Who´s the most familiar person in here
regarding the the two towers and it´s
inner structure?

NOT CHRISTOPHERA

[Oliver]

But? :-D

[LashL]

Originally Posted by Oliver

Maybe it´s proofable if there where bombs
or not. William Rodriguez talked (and (s)ome
others i dont remind) about the elevator doors,
wich were blown open.

Working 20 Years in the Building, William and
other people should remind which specific
elevator doors were blown.

If not all elevators did reach entireley to the
floors where the planes hit, these doors
should´nt have been blown during the
fireball walking down the shafts, am i right?

It would be helpfull to have blueprints or
someone who knows the towers like Willi.

Regards,
Oliver

William Rodriguez has changed his story since he brought a lawsuit against the government.

His initial story was much different than his later versions of events. I wouldn't put too much stock in him if I were you.

By the way, there is a grave misconception about the layout of the elevators in the WTC towers. People look at a schematic that has been widely distributed and think that it actually shows all of the elevators but if you bother to count them, it shows no more than 15 of the 99 or 100 that were actually in each tower. The schematic is merely representative, not comprehensive.

The drawing I refer to is this:



For instance, there were 12 elevator cars that ran express from the 78th floor to the lobby (powered by a massive bank of elevator machines on the 81st floor) but many people think that there is only 1 because the representational drawing only shows 1. This is a good example of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing". It is beyond dispute that there were 12, not 1, and it is beyond dispute that the drawing is merely representational, but people who do not delve beyond the surface (read: conspiracy theorists) will misinterpret reality all day long rather than actually do any real research themselves.

People also are mistaken about the shafts, probably because they look at that same graphic and do not realize that on each floor, there were multiple elevator cars, not just one as depicted in the graphic.

As I understand it, the shafts themselves were uninterrupted from top to bottom, even though most of the elevators did not stop on every floor. The local elevator cars, then, could be "stacked" within the core space, with each of the local elevator cars programmed to stop only on certain floors. For instance, imagine that some of the local elevators stopped only on floors 20 through 30. The shafts would still have to run from the lobby, obviously, and could not just magically begin on floor 20.

It is the "stacking" arrangement that allowed them to fit 100 elevators into the core.

Moreover, the bulk of those shafts were open rather than sealed (but I'll get into the details of that later rather than put too much into this post), such that there were numerous elevators among the various lift mechanisms that were all in open "shafts" side by side ... i.e. not "hermetically sealed" or even non-hermetically sealed for that matter.

Also, remember that the entire diagram above is of the CORE, not the building, and remember that the rest of the space within the core where the elevators are located is just empty space, with nothing to stop the flow of liquids, such as jet fuel. The drawing may be misleading to those who don't know that because they will probably erroneously assume that lines drawn to delineate elevation are actual "floors" as in concrete and such, when, of course, there was no such division in the core. The lines are there only to denote elevation, not structure in the core, which was, of course, empty other than elevator shafts and staircases.

Repeat: remember, this is just the core - the out of sight, out of mind, space with nothing but stairs and elevators in it, and not the rentable space of the building.

I am told that all of the shafts actually ran from top to bottom, which makes perfect sense and no other arrangement would make any sense, frankly.

I will add more later about the mythical "hermetically sealed" shafts that the CTers like to cite. I am just awaiting confirmation of a couple of additional facts before posting it here.

[Oliver]

Hello Lash,

i really hope that you´re able to reach
someone regarding this shaft-question
and also someone who was there and
saw wich doors were blown out.

What about the official documents,
or "Yamasaki and Associates". Does
this firm still exist?

I´m sorry that my english skills are
not good enough to explain the issue
in a plausible, easy way to call these
people for my own.

Regards,
Oliver

[LashL]

Originally Posted by Oliver

Hello Lash,

i really hope that you´re able to reach
someone regarding this shaft-question
and also someone who was there and
saw wich doors were blown out.

What about the official documents,
or "Yamasaki and Associates". Does
this firm still exist?

I´m sorry that my english skills are
not good enough to explain the issue
in a plausible, easy way to call these
people for my own.

Regards,
Oliver

Oliver,
Your English skills are fine. Read my post again.
It is ludicrous to suggest that there was only "one elevator shaft" that ran the length of the building.

As I said above, CTers base their nonsensical claim on a drawing that, according to their interpretation, would mean that there were only 15 elevator cars, not the 100 elevator cars that actually existed, and their inability to research facts. But that's not terribly surpising since reality is not their strong point.

[LashL]

...

[LashL]

Originally Posted by kevin

Not all elevators served all floors but the shafts went from top to bottom. The only floors the shafts could've been topped off at were the maintenance floors and I doubt they did.

Further the shafts were enclosed in 2 layers of drywall, NOT concrete or other material. This means when the plane plowed into the core it probably blew the walls off all the shafts in the area it hit (if they had doors or not). At this point fireballs could go down any shaft and blow out doors on any floor (or the walls if there were no floors).

Here are some typical floor plans. I believe the big shafts are the express elevators you could take to a sky lobby, where you would catch the local elevator to the exact floor you needed. The smaller shafts are the local elevators. Note by flipping the restroom locations on each floor you can expose different sets of elevators to exit on that floor.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com...0af25e5378.png
http://www.internationalskeptics.com...0af258f4b5.png

Yes, that is in keeping with the 12 express elevators from 78 down, and the general 6 per side per bank in the WTC towers.

[Oliver]

I still have problems to realize how these shafts have
looked like but you´re right, i thought the illustration
shows the whole building and the specific arrangements
between the shafts.

I have to read your post again to get a usable "picture"
of the shafts configuration.

Who said that there was just one shaft? The LC-Video?
I remember that they talked about airsealed elevator,
but i don´t remind of only one shaft.

Thank you for your help to get thru of this,
Oliver

[Oliver]

By the way - i´m to new to the 9/11 issue to
know about William Rodriguez initial story.

What were the differences between them
concerning the elevators?

I try to find the whole initial story of him
later.

[Oliver]

I have some serious problems with the technical nature of
your description - besides the translation, LashL.

You said that there were 12 elevator cars that ran express from
the 78th floor to the lobby (powered by a massive bank of elevator
machines on the 81st floor. I got this.

Where were the mashinery to the local elevators located if
the shafts were uninterrupted? Also on top of the building,
right?

How is it possible to stack the elevators? I still have these
old style elevators in my mind: Mashinery on top (or level) and
the wires connected to the cabins/cars - nothing between,
no stacking at all.

You said: "It is ludicrous to suggest that there was only "
one elevator shaft" that ran the length of the building."

and:

"remember that the entire diagram above is of the CORE, not
the building, and remember that the rest of the space within
the core where the elevators are located is just empty space"

Sorry, i missed something between these two arguments.
The first description says, that there was no "one elevator
shaft" but your second description seems to say the opposite -
that the whole core was empty space with the elevators within
this empty space?

I´m really sorry to have difficulties to draw this picture
in my mind but for some, i think linguistic reasons, i can´t
puzzle it together.

[Pardalis]

Originally Posted by Oliver

I´m really sorry to have difficulties to draw this picturein my mind but for some, i think linguistic reasons, i can´t
puzzle it together.

Maybe you could make it rhyme.

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by Pardalis

Maybe you could make it rhyme.

Belive it or not - right now this would be much easier.

[Pardalis]

Originally Posted by Oliver

Sorry, i missed something between these two arguments. The first description says, that there was no "one elevator
shaft" but your second description seems to say the opposite -
that the whole core was empty space with the elevators within
this empty space?

I´m really sorry to have difficulties to draw this picture
in my mind but for some, i think linguistic reasons, i can´t
puzzle it together.

Here, empty space where the elevators are (not a pic from the WTC tho)

[HeyLeroy]

I left a pineapple grenade under my pillow and all I got was a waffle pattern on my face in the morning.

Question: Should I try a potato-masher grenade?

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by Pardalis

Here, empty space where the elevators are (not a pic from the WTC tho)

http://www.internationalskeptics.com...10efa8c63e.jpg

This helps me a lot if it´s not WTC-Core.
What about stacking the elevators?

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by HeyLeroy

I left a pineapple grenade under my pillow and all I got was a waffle pattern on my face in the morning.

Question: Should I try a potato-masher grenade?

You may give it a try and explain it to me in german, would you? :-D

[Pardalis]

Originally Posted by Oliver

What about stacking the elevators?

Stacking the elevators?

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by Pardalis

Stacking the elevators?

Hello Pardalis,

this is a description from LashL:

Quote: It is the "stacking" arrangement that allowed them to fit 100 elevators into the core.

[Pardalis]

other elevator empty space.

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by Pardalis

other elevator empty space.

Was that a comparison between the 2 Pictures
or 2 examples for empty space? I know what
empty space is. :">

BTW: It would be easier for me to describe the "empty space"
within the elevator as shaft - and the "empty space" between
two rows of elevators as "gangway"

[Oliver]

Believe me - if i get this straight, i will make an
illustration out of it - or a 3d Scene/Rendering.

(Edit):

Well, i try to find out for myself. Maybe i get
a better view into the Towers studying the
official reports concerning the internal structure.

Regards,
Oliver

[HeyLeroy]

Originally Posted by Oliver

You may give it a try and explain it to me in german, would you? :-D

Jawohl. Danke.

[Oliver]

Keine Ursache, Leroy.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com...ad.php?t=63325

[Pardalis]

Kidding aside, there's a nice animatic here:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/...tor-usat_x.htm

Click on the "interactive documentary" called "Elevators:Escape route or death trap".

It kinda make us see in 3D how the elevator shafts are in relation with one another.

ETA:The elevator shafts in the center seem to have been the ones going all the way up.

[kevin]

Originally Posted by Oliver

Where were the mashinery to the local elevators located if
the shafts were uninterrupted? Also on top of the building,
right?

There was some at the top of the building, but there was also equipment on each of the technical services floors.

It isn't necessary to have a closed floor to locate elevator equipment. They may have placed it on a beam (I've seen this in a couple of buildings) or they can locate the heavy stuff off to the side and have a pully over the shaft.

I think what you may be failing to realize is that the local elevator shafts were continuous all the way up, but had 3 elevators in each shaft. The cables for the elevator terminated on the technical services floor, and above it the shaft continued with another elevator in it, controlled from the technical services floor above it.

[WildCat]

Doesn't each elevator car have a counter-weight attached that travels a separate shaft?

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by kevin

There was some at the top of the building, but there was also equipment on each of the technical services floors.

It isn't necessary to have a closed floor to locate elevator equipment. They may have placed it on a beam (I've seen this in a couple of buildings) or they can locate the heavy stuff off to the side and have a pully over the shaft.

I think what you may be failing to realize is that the local elevator shafts were continuous all the way up, but had 3 elevators in each shaft. The cables for the elevator terminated on the technical services floor, and above it the shaft continued with another elevator in it, controlled from the technical services floor above it.

To Pardalis: Thank you for the enlightening article.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/...tor-usat_x.htm

I never realized what horror it must have been with the
people who were trapped and the people who tried to
rescue them.

Elevator animation:
http://www.usatoday.com/graphics/new...2002/flash.htm

Let me sum up what i´ve learned so far to get rid of
some missunderstandings conecerning the elevators/&shafts:

(Thanks for your help, too, Kevin)

There were multiple main shafts within the towers
for the big elevators. Each of these shafts contained
multiple elevators.

These multiple mainshafts went from the bottom up
to different stages of the building. The highest shaft
ended at the top floor while the "shortest shaft" ended
at the second skylobby. Underneath the skylobbies, the
"technical sevice"-floors contained the mashinery for
the elevators - but these floors did´nt interrupt the
shafts, (maybe) because of some type of open installed
"deflection pulleys" - right so far?

On the other side there were smaller shafts for the
local, also smaller elevators. These shafts did´nt
run thru the whole building - to safe space. So these
shafts must had their own mashinery - beside the
technical service-areas, also right?

I´ve been told that "Gravy" used to be very familiar
with the towers. if someone met him - maybe he want
to join the discussion about the "lobby-bomb-theorie",
too - if there wasn´t allready a thread about it.

My next step is to study the NIST-Reports but i keep
an eye to the thread.

Thank you for your help so far,
Oliver

[kevin]

Originally Posted by WildCat

Doesn't each elevator car have a counter-weight attached that travels a separate shaft?

It doesn't have to travel in a seperate shaft, in fact I would be surprised if they put them in seperate shafts anymore (too expensive in terms of space.)

some examples here with the weights in the same shaft:
http://www.madehow.com/Volume-2/Elevator.html

[LashL]

Originally Posted by Oliver

I have some serious problems with the technical nature of
your description - besides the translation, LashL.

Where were the mashinery to the local elevators located if
the shafts were uninterrupted? Also on top of the building,
right?

On various floors; some around 46 which controlled the bank of express elevators that ran from the 44th floor sky lobby to the ground; others on 81 as set out above; some on other floors throughout the building; some at the top to control the elevators that serviced the top floors.

Quote:

How is it possible to stack the elevators? I still have these
old style elevators in my mind: Mashinery on top (or level) and
the wires connected to the cabins/cars - nothing between,
no stacking at all.

Actually, the drawings above show the "stacking" that I'm talking about. I.e. several elevator cars sharing a single hoistway but individual elevator cars only stopping on certain floors while other elevator cars above or below service other floors.

Quote:

You said: "It is ludicrous to suggest that there was only "
one elevator shaft" that ran the length of the building."

and:

"remember that the entire diagram above is of the CORE, not
the building, and remember that the rest of the space within
the core where the elevators are located is just empty space"

Sorry, i missed something between these two arguments.
The first description says, that there was no "one elevator
shaft" but your second description seems to say the opposite -
that the whole core was empty space with the elevators within
this empty space?

I´m really sorry to have difficulties to draw this picture
in my mind but for some, i think linguistic reasons, i can´t
puzzle it together.

If I knew how to use photoshop, I could explain it better as I could add to the drawings provided above, and try to make it clearer. You have no need to apologize - it is difficult to explain the layout of the elevators based on the drawings without being able to point to the various areas as I'm explaining it, and I probably just didn't explain it clearly enough for you to understand. If we were sitting in a restaurant having coffee, it would all be clear within 2 minutes, but such are the limitations of the internet (well, that and my non-ability with digital manipulation software).

And, yes, I can see why you had some difficulty trying to reconcile my statement that there was not only one shaft with my statement about the empty space in the core - I did not articulate it very well. I will try to explain it more clearly below.

Most people think of an elevator "shaft" as an enclosed space that houses only one elevator, and think that every elevator is enclosed within its own "shaft" completely separate from other elevator cars. While that is often the case in older and smaller buildings, it is not the case in modern highrise buildings and it wasn't the case in the WTC towers with its ~100 elevator cars per tower and its banks of elevators servicing different floors, but my response was referring to the misnomer about the "shafts" in the way that most people think of them. I should have said that it is ludicrous to suggest that jet fuel could only travel down the path of a single elevator car that happened to run express from top to bottom because there is so much empty space from top to bottom throughout the core that the fuel would not be confined to a single "shaft" in the sense that the term is so often misconstrued.

If you've been in a modern skyscraper, you probably know that from the lobby, you have to choose among the banks of elevators to get to the floor that you wish to reach, and that only the elevators in a particular bank of elevators service certain floors. I.e. here's a hypothetical: if you want to get to the 54th floor, you have to use the bank of elevators that stop only on floors 48-58, for instance. You can't get there by using the bank of the elevators that stop only on floors 18-28, nor can you get there by using the bank of elevators that run express from the ground to, say, the 78th floor.

In each elevator bank, there will be several elevators side by side, and although from the inside of any given elevator car, there is the illusion that it is entirely encapsulated and travelling in its own separate enclosed shaft, that is not the case in buildings like these. In any given bank of elevators, let's say 6 in a row as was typical in the twin towers, (x2 for opposite sides of the landing for a total of 12 per bank with 6 on each side of the landing) the elevator cars were not actually operating in sealed shafts separate from each other.

I am led to believe that only some of the express elevators, (that is to say, only some of the approximately 26-28 in each tower that ran from 0-44, 0-78 and 0-107, including freight elevators) were individually and separately enclosed in separate shafts (although I have not been able to confirm the numbers yet) and that the majority of the ~100 elevators in each tower did not have individually enclosed shafts.

Anyway, I am going to try to tackle Photoshop in order to explain it better than I have so far. Hopefully, it will make more sense then. Plus, as noted above, I am waiting for confirmation on some details about the separation of the elevators etc. (My source is a FDNY fire commander with a specialty in high rise fires and high rise fire safety which he also studies and lectures on but he's been away this past week and will be very busy this weekend, needless to say, so I'm not sure when to expect his response).

If I can't figure out the software over the weekend, I will copy and print the drawings, make my additions/explanations, scan them and post them instead.

EDIT TO ADD: Oh, I see now that some of the questions have already been answered - sorry, I didn't read through the whole thread before beginning to formulate my response. Please ignore whatever is redundant.

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by kevin

I think what you may be failing to realize is that the local elevator shafts were continuous all the way up, but had 3 elevators in each shaft. The cables for the elevator terminated on the technical services floor, and above it the shaft continued with another elevator in it, controlled from the technical services floor above it.

Actually i understand the elevator-stacking right now,
but i feel unsure about the shafts itself. Did they went
all the way thru the building or were some shorter and
some long as the towers itselfs?

BTW: "counter-weight"

I remember "U-Form"-counter-weights in elevators that
move on the outside >around< the elevator - sharing
the same space as the elevator.

[Oliver]

Originally Posted by LashL

If I can't figure out the software over the weekend, I will copy and print the drawings, make my additions/explanations, scan them and post them instead. EDIT TO ADD: Oh, I see now that some of the questions have already been answered - sorry, I didn't read through the whole thread before beginning to formulate my response. Please ignore whatever is redundant.

Thank you very much for your help, LashL.

You don´t have to make an illustration - i think i see
things much more clearer now. One thing i did´nt
understand right now is, were >all< the elevator-
shafts from the top to the bottom, and were they
all "un-interrupted", sharing the same shafts.

If this is the case, then it sounds very logic to
me, that the lobby had such a destruction - "like
a bomb".

There´s a discussion about the bomb-theorie
on RBN-radio right now:

http://www.rbnlive.com/listen32k.pls

[Gravy]

Originally Posted by Oliver

I´ve been told that "Gravy" used to be very familiar with the towers. if someone met him - maybe he want
to join the discussion about the "lobby-bomb-theorie",
too - if there wasn´t allready a thread about it.

Hi, Oliver. Glad to help.
The explosion in the north tower elevator shafts, which damaged several floors, the lobby, and basement levels, was caused by jet fuel. Following are descriptions from several north tower survivors. I've bolded descriptions that mention jet fuel or kerosene (Jet-A fuel is basically kerosene). I've also bolded other passages that I felt were interesting.

91st Floor

Quote:

George Sleigh, a British-born naval architect, was on the phone in his 91st floor office when he heard the roar of jet engines. Looking out his window, he had time to think just three things: The wheels are up, the underbelly is white, and "man, that guy is low." An American Airlines Boeing 767 was hurtling toward him at 500 mph, loaded with 92 people and 15,000 gallons of jet fuel. The jet exploded into the 93rd through 98th floors of the World Trade Center's north tower with a force equal to 480,000 pounds of TNT. It was 8:46 a.m. on Sept. 11.

The walls, the ceiling and bookshelves crumbled. Sleigh, 63, manager of technical consistency at the American Bureau of Shipping, crawled from the rubble. He looked up at exposed steel beams and the concrete underside of the 92nd floor. He didn't know it at the time, but that concrete floor was the bottom of a tomb for more than 1,300 people. Nobody survived on the floors above him. But on his floor and below, an amazing story unfolded: Nearly everyone lived.

The line between life and death that morning was as straight as a steel beam. Everyone on the 92nd floor died. Everyone on the 91st floor lived.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/...tcsurvival.htm

88th Floor

Quote:

In the Management Office on the 88th floor, the scope of the catastrophe was more evident. John Griffin Jr. and Charlie Magee also thought at first that an electrical substation had blown up. The force of the explosion lifted furnishing into the air. One desk had flown up and landed five feet away. The falling debris and furnishings blocked access to the stairwells. The room began to fill with smoke. John, Charlie and others began to break out windows to get air into the room. http://www.chiefengineer.org/article.cfm?seqnum1=1029

86th Floor

Quote:

``The explosion on the 86th floor seemed to come from the inside out, rather than the outside in,'' said Mr. Gartenberg, 35, of Manhattan. ``That's why the core of the building is as damaged as it is. The fire door is blocked. It either closed from the force of the explosion or as a fire precaution. The elevators are completely blown out.'' http://www.mishalov.com/wtc_northtower.html

63rd floor

Quote:

Paul Neal: Almost immediately after the impact, somewhat bizarrely, I smelled an overwhelming stench of aviation fuel, Jet A1 gas, which I recognized because I'm a private pilot and I'm used to airfield environments. I recall smelling it and almost instantly dismissed it as being illogical and didn't have any place in the World Trade Center.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2907_wtc.html

50th Floor

Quote:

By the time they got to about the 50th floor, United Airlines Flight 175 had slammed into the south tower of the World Trade Center, something he wouldn't know about until later.

Instead, the smell of kerosene was getting stronger and soon he felt people bumping into him as Roselle, Frank and he continued downstairs.
The problem was, the people bumping into him were going the wrong way.
"I heard applause and was told they were firefighters," he said. "I clapped a few on the back, but I was scared for where they were going."
http://www.sabwo.org.za/brette/rette139.htm

47th Floor

Quote:

"I got off [the elevator], turned the corner and opened the door to the ladies' room. I said good morning to a lady sitting at a mirror when the whole building shook. I thought it was an earthquake. Then I heard those banging noises on the other side of the wall. It sounded like someone had cut the elevator cables. It just fell and fell and fell.

I began to cry. "Oh, my God, I just got off that elevator!" I said. "That could have been me." I prayed those other people had gotten off on the 48th floor before the elevator dropped. But I didn't have much time to be upset because the building shook again, this time even more violently. The lady at the mirror grabbed onto me and held on for dear life."

Veliz went down a staircase with a coworker to the concourse level. In the mall, they got onto an up-escalator as the South Tower collapsed, causing a rush of wind which knocked them down. In the pitch black, Veliz and her coworker followed someone carrying a flashlight:

"The flashlight led us into Borders bookstore, up an escalator and out to Church Street. There were explosions going off everywhere. I was convinced that there were bombs planted all over the place and someone was sitting at a control panel pushing detonator buttons. I was afraid to go down Church Street toward Broadway, but I had to do it. I ended up on Vesey Street. There was another explosion. And another. I didn't know where to run." http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/veliz-bombs.htm
Note: Loose Change uses the "detonator buttons" quote as if Veliz was describing an event prior to the south tower collapsing, not after.

38th (and 43rd) Floor

Quote:

On the 38th floor, Joe Shearin exited the elevator and began his walk down the hallway to meet with the tenant who had requested to see him. About 50 feet down the hallway, he heard a loud explosion and was lifted into the air. "I can't even tell you how far I traveled," he recalled. When he landed, people were already coming out of their offices into the hallway. "They were screaming, hollering," he said. "They were asking what they should do and where they should go". Joe directed them down the stairwells and out of the building.

What Joe first believed was that an equipment room on the 43rd floor, which had an electrical substation, had blown up. He proceeded up the 5 floors to that level. Upon reaching the 43rd floor, "there were patches of ceiling that was just down on the floor, water pipes were broken, water was gushing like a brook or river that was just running down the corridor of the machine room". He began yelling to see if anyone was in the room and received no reply.
http://www.chiefengineer.org/article.cfm?seqnum1=1029

38th Floor: stairwell blocked by debris

Quote:

Sure, Livon Neil is one of the lucky ones. He was in the North Tower on September 11, but he survived. He was only on the 38th floor, and well out of there by the time it fell. But while Neil may have escaped unharmed, he is most certainly not unscathed.

After diving under his desk in response to what he thought was an earthquake, the 30-year-old systems analyst (who graduated with a bachelor of science in physiology and human biology in 1994 while attending New College) heard "screaming coming from the elevator shaft, like ladies screaming. And I saw dust coming out, smoke." He ran toward the stairs, only to hear more yelling from below. There seemed to be no way out for anybody. He huddled in the stairway for some 20 minutes, until a phalanx of firefighters – many of them soon to sacrifice their own lives – arrived and opened an exit for him and his group. "While I was coming out," Neil says softly, "it was like a war zone. I looked up and saw a person in mid-air. I looked to my right in the courtyard and there were body parts."
http://www.magazine.utoronto.ca/02winter/testimony.asp

30th Floor

Quote:

Jen Murawski: "At 8:46am, the 1st plane flew into the north tower, my building. My co-workers and I escaped by descending 30 flights of stairs through jet fuel fumes and water." http://www.survivorsnet.org/writings...nniversary.pdf

25th floor to Lobby

Quote:

Christopher Ferrer:
I remember this so clearly. It started as a rumble in our seats, and then grew into vibrations from the ceiling to the floor. It moved the building so much that our desk drawers popped open. We all stood up immediately, but couldn't move. The building was shaking from side to side, and we froze just to keep our balance. My vision was even affected. It was no different than watching some old movie that shook the camera to give the audience a sense of what was happening.

...I thought it was odd that no one was coming into our stairwell from other floors. I assumed that they found other stairwells. … 21, 20, 19 … I could smell something familiar. There it is, my first connection to the outside. I could smell something. What is it? It reminds me of something. Kerosene? It smells like the kerosene heaters my father had 20 years ago in the Poconos. (I never made the connection to jet fuel until later on.)

...Some said they saw bodies fall; some saw debris. 13, 12, Our Father, Hail Mary, 11, 10, "hold it." We hear someone say something about what was going on ahead of us. We keep going; 9, 8, 7, then again, "hold it."
That's when we heard, "there's water down here." Picture the scene. You can only see half a flight below you and half above. If you crane your neck into the center of the stairs, all you can see are dozens of hands. There is still no panic. We are using those ahead of us as scouts, listening to whatever we could. The smell of burning kerosene is getting stronger.
"There's water on 4." 6, 5, there it is. Water is seeping from the bottom of the stairwell door on 4, and beginning to flow down the steps. We get to 3 and it's cascading down the steps. By the time we reach 2, it's a few inches deep. We leave the stairwell onto the concourse. The view was war-like. When we came out of the emergency door, you could see burned debris all over the plaza. I didn't see anything falling, but I still remember the thumping sounds. It wasn't until I met up with a coworker that I realized the thumping was bodies falling.

When we got to 1, the elevator doors were blown out and blackened. These were our first images of what was happening. They led us out the Marriott Hotel lobby. On the floor to our right was a fireman with a woman who was blackened from head to toe, barely alive, if alive at all.
http://alumni.stevens-tech.edu/News_...03-04_Art4.htm

Graphic descriptions of injuries and fatalities follow.
Lobby & 3rd floor

Quote:

Firefighter Peter Blaich
As we got to the third floor of the B stairway, we forced open an elevator door which was burnt on all three sides. The only thing that was remaining was the hoistway door. And inside the elevator were about I didnt recognize them initially, but a guy from 1 Truck said oh my God, those are people. They were pretty incinerated. And I remember the overpowering smell of kerosene. Thats when Lieutenant Foti said oh, thats the jet fuel. I remember it smelled like if youre camping and you drop a kerosene lamp.

The same thing happened to the elevators in the main lobby. They were basically blown out. I dont recall if I actually saw people in there.
What got me initially in the lobby was that as soon as we went in, all the windows were blown out, and there were one or two burning cars outside. And there were burn victims on the street there, walking around. We walked through this giant blown-out window into the lobby.

There was a lady there screaming that she didnt know how she got burnt. She was just in the lobby and then next thing she knew she was on fire. She was burnt bad. And somebody came over with a fire extinguisher and was putting water on her.

Thats the first thing that got me. That and in front of one of the big elevator banks in the lobby was a desk and I definitely made out one of the corpses to be a security guard because he had a security label on his jacket. Im assuming that maybe he was at a table still in a chair and almost completely incinerated, charred all over his body, definitely dead. And you could make out like a security tag on his jacket. And I remember seeing the table was melted, but he was still fused in the chair and that elevator bank was melted, so I imagine the jet fuel must have blown right down the elevator shaft and I guess caught the security guard at a table, I guess at some type of checkpoint. http://www.firehouse.com/terrorist/9...gz/blaich.html

Lobby

Quote:

Brian Reeves, a 34-year-old security guard, was nearly killed while making the rounds in the lobby of 1 World Trade Center on September 11. He started to run after hearing an explosion that he said sounded like a missile, but he was knocked down by a fireball that roared down the elevator shaft.

Reeves suffered third-degree burns to 40 percent of his body before he was able to pat out the flames. He was one of 20 critically-injured patients rushed to New York Presbyterian’s burn unit that day.

http://www.ny1.com/pages/RRR/911special_survivors.html

Lobby

Quote:

David Kravette, a managing director of Cantor Fitzgerald, the bond trading firm that occupied the upper floors of the North Tower and lost about 700 people, or more than two thirds of its 1,000 U.S.-based employees addressed what he saw in the lobby as the first plane hit. I have provided this quote from the Mercury News New York Bureau since it is the only reference I have seen to the free falling elevators and the fire ball at the lower levels of the tower.

``I saw a couple of elevators in free fall; you could hear them whizzing down and as they crashed, there was this huge explosion, like a fireball exploding out of the bank of elevators,'' Kravette said. ``People were engulfed in flames.'' http://www.engr.psu.edu/ae/WTC/CantorFitzgerald.html

Lobbby

Quote:

As he waited for orders, Meldrum, the chauffeur (Fire engine driver), noticed that all windows in the high lobby were blown out. Glass and marble from busted walls littered the floors, crunched underfoot. He caught an occasional whiff of jet fuel, a smell like kerosene, wafting from elevator shafts. On the floor by the elevators he saw burned people. http://www.projo.com/words/st20021016.htm

Lobby

Quote:

Firefighter Joseph Casaliggi: We went into the lobby. The lobby actually looked like the plane hit the lobby. From what I understand, I was told afterwards, that a fireball shot down the elevator shaft and blew out all the windows in the lobby and blew out the elevator doors. http://graphics8.nytimes.com/package...IC/9110430.PDF

Lobby

Quote:

For those of you who may not know the story, she was entering the lobby of the North Tower of the World Trade Center when a fireball exploded from the elevator shaft. She and two others managed to run out of the building, all three of them on fire. A passerby across the street ran to them, reaching Lauren first, and put the flames out. He then put Lauren in an ambulance, so she was the first person evacuated. He certainly saved her life. http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/d...0&view=excerpt

Lobby

Quote:

Mike Pecoraro: "When I walked out into the lobby, it was incredible," he recalled. "The whole lobby was soot and black, elevator doors were missing. The marble was missing off some of the walls. 20-foot section of marble, 20 by 10 foot sections of marble, gone from the walls".

The west windows were all gone. They were missing. These are tremendous windows. They were just gone. Broken glass everywhere, the revolving doors were all broken and their glass was gone. Every sprinkler head was going off. I am thinking to myself, how are these sprinkler heads going off? It takes a lot of heat to set off a sprinkler head. It never dawned on me that there was a giant fireball that came through the air of the lobby. I never knew that until later on. The jet fuel actually came down the elevator shaft, blew off all the (elevator) doors and flames rolled through the lobby. That explained all the burnt people and why everything was sooted in the lobby." http://www.chiefengineer.org/article.cfm?seqnum1=1029

North tower lobby while south tower collapses:

Quote:

Mike and Arti decided it was time to leave as well. They left the stairwell and re-entered the lobby. As they walked to the exit, they heard a roar and the floor began to shake.

"Banging so hard that we fell down on our knees," he said. "I'm looking south, at the building, Arti's looking at me, we locked eyes and he is screaming at the top of his lungs...I can barely hear this guy. He's screaming, "What the f? is that?", and I am screaming back at him, that I think it's another plane".

In reality, as the two were kneeling in the lobby of 1 World Trade Center, its sister building, 2 World Trade Center, was crashing down upon them.

"The building was just bouncing and bouncing, the floor was bouncing. I figured another plane already hit the building". Mike related. "I'm looking ahead and I see all the windows, either three story tall windows or four story tall windows, 10 feet wide; shatter. All of them broke at the same time. All the glass flew over my head. I'm looking up, on my knees, with my hands on the floor, and I saw all that glass. You're talking glass three inches thick, go right over our heads. I saw that some of the firemen who was standing on the perimeter (mezzanine) was blown right off the top. They just flew over the top. I can't put a number on it, maybe ten. Bunch of firemen were guarding doors there. They got blown off. Don't know where they went. I saw pieces of debris as big as cars go right over my head without stopping. Like a line drive right over my head," he said, raising his hand to indicate an approximate 4 foot level.

"I put my head down, put my hands over my head. I still had gloves in my hand. I put the gloves over my head and there was a wind that came through the revolving doors that blew me 100 feet to the far wall, right by the visitor's desk. The floor was covered with sheetrock (powdered) and water so it was like a soup. It was very slippery". http://www.chiefengineer.org/article.cfm?seqnum1=1029

Concourse: this gives an idea of how large the towers were. The concourse was below the elevator lobby that was hit by the fireball.

Quote:

I was in the World trade Center headed for a 9:30 meeting on the 72nd floor of Tower One. I was about 15 minutes from getting on the elevator. I was still on the concourse level (ground) when the the first plane hit. There was smoke, but people were calmly walking to the exits. We didn't know what happened. Out side was a kind of surreal atmosphere. Lots of debris. I saw the building on fire, big holes, and then ran for cover. When the second plane hit, I was just below and had just walked into the lobby of a building accross the street from the south side of Tower Two where the plane hit. The noise was incredible. There was a lot of panic in there. I thought I was going to be buried by a falling tower. I held on to the people next to me, they were praying. http://www.engr.psu.edu/ae/WTC/LindaTollner.htm

Concourse

Quote:

Afterwards, I withdrew some money at the HSBC bank and took the escalator downstairs to the main concourse and joined an incredible throng of people. It was 8:45 am, and thousands were coming to work.

I stopped to get a paper and cut diagonally through the crowd, weaving and dodging my way towards the subway station. I had almost reached the Uptown 1 and 9 station when there was an enormous explosion. The building shook. I heard people say, "Oh, no." Some, not many, were screaming.

We all knew at that moment that we were under a terrorist attack. Most of us assumed it was a bomb.

I looked ahead past Banana Republic, past Citibank to the plaza outside. At that moment, there was a terrifying tidal wave of smoke filling the doorway. It began to shoot forward. The smoke had this enormous momentum that started to come towards us, as if it had a will of its own.

We ran. We ran together past the Coach store. We ran to get out of the path of this enormous wave of smoke. It was like we were being chased. All the people on the concourse ran. We turned right, heading toward the PATH trains.

As we ran, shop assistants were calling in doorways, "What happened? What happened?" But we were running so fast we couldn't answer them and they ran with us. Some people were crying; some people were screaming.

We moved as one body. No one pushed and no one shoved. We all had the same intention: to get out of the building. http://nymag.com/news/articles/wtc/accounts.htm

Lower Concourse

Quote:

My normal commute involves taking the PATH train from New Jersey to WTC in New York. I reached WTC around 8:57 am and as soon as the doors opened we were engulfed by some chemical that smelled like kerosene and smoke. Not realizing what had happened I walked up the escalator to the ground floor of the WTC where Police officers were directing all commuters to leave the building as soon as possible. Emerging outside of WTC, it looked like a bomb had exploded because there was debris everywhere, paper, fibre-glass insulation and numerous other office stationary material. In my mind I recalled the bombing from 1993 and thought this was something very similar.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/1544197.stm

Basement: level unknown

Quote:

Construction worker Phillip Morelli, a 37-year-old Queens native, loved his seven years of working at the World Trade Center. When he heard the impact of the first airliner striking more than 90 floors above, he thought something big had tipped over in one of the other basement levels just above him.

He encountered smoke and screaming people when he made his way up to the underground parking lot, then started running over to the other tower, the way out from there. He arrived as the second airliner hit, sending the walls crashing down around him.
http://www.ny1.com/pages/RRR/911special_survivors.html

1st Sub-basement: Philipe David

Quote:

felipe david, who had been standing in front of a freight elevator on sub level 1:

“That day I was in the basement in sub-level 1 sometime after 8:30am. Everything happened so fast, everything moved so fast. The building started shaking after I heard the explosion below, dust was flying everywhere and all of a sudden it got real hot." http://www.arcticbeacon.com/13-Jul-2005.html

1st Sub-basement: William Rodriguez

Quote:

But since he was late, Rodriguez found himself checking into work in an office on sub-level 1 when the north tower was hit, seemingly out of harms way. However, the sound and concussion of a massive explosion in the sub-levels right below his feet changed that.

"When I heard the sound of the explosion, the floor beneath my feet vibrated, the walls started cracking and it everything started shaking," said Rodriguez, who was huddled together with at least 14 other people in the office.

Rodriguez said Anthony Saltamachia, supervisor for the American Maintenance Co., was one of the people in the room who stands ready to verify his story.

"Seconds after the first massive explosion below in the basement still rattled the floor, I hear another explosion from way above," said Rodriguez. "Although I was unaware at the time, this was the airplane hitting the tower, it occurred moments after the first explosion."

But before Rodriguez had time to think, co-worker Felipe David stormed into the basement office with severe burns on his face and arms, screaming for help and yelling "explosion! explosion! explosion!"

David had been in front of a nearby freight elevator on sub-level 1 about 400 feet from the office when fire burst out of the elevator shaft, causing his injuries.

"He was burned terribly," said Rodriguez. "The skin was hanging off his hands and arms. His injuries couldn’t have come from the airplane above, but only from a massive explosion below. I don’t care what the government says, what scientists say. I saw a man burned terribly from a fire that was caused from an explosion below.

"I know there were explosives placed below the trade center. I helped a man to safety who is living proof, living proof the government story is a lie and a cover-up. http://skyscrapercity.com/archive/in.../t-112218.html

Here’s how Rodriguez initially described the first sounds:

Quote:

"We heard a loud rumble, then all of a sudden we heard another rumble like someone moving a whole lot of furniture," Rodriguez said. "and then the elevator opened and a man came into our office and all of his skin was off." http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/new.york.terror/

1st Sub-basement

Quote:

In the taped interview, (Salvatore) Giambanco told Gurisatti, the Colombian reporter:

"We heard the explosion and the smoke all of a sudden came from all over. There was an incredible force of wind that also swept everything away. I remember hearing a scream of a woman, but I couldn't see her. I had just gotten off the elevator and I was standing by it with another man but didn't know his name.

"The doors of the elevator were still open and, I don't know why we did, but we both jumped back in maybe because of the wind whipping everything around in the hallway. "Then, suddenly, the elevator doors closed in front of us and we started going down. It all of a sudden stopped and I could see through the cracks we were between B-2 and B-3. We were both screaming and afraid. I remember seeing through the slot of the elevator and seeing other people running and screaming.

"Then water started gushing in the elevator and I remember saying, 'God, please help us.' At that point, I was resigned to the fact I was going to die"

But like a miracle, Giambanco's plea to God was answered as all of a sudden he heard someone yelling from above, "How many people are down there?"

The miracle above turned out to be Rodriguez who had returned into the WTC after helping David to safety in order to help others after disobeying police orders to remain outside.

"I remember rushing past police, telling them to go to hell as I was going back to help my friends no matter what," recalls Rodriguez about his basement search for survivors before eventually only making his way to the 39th floor before being turned back in a desperate attempt to reach the top floors.

In the basement, Rodriguez managed to find a construction ladder, miraculously lowering it into the elevator after courageously entering the darkened shaft and opening the top hatch on the elevator where Giambanco and the other unidentified man now were standing thigh-deep in water from the broken or activated sprinkler system spewing water into the elevator shaft.

"I don't know he did it, but I felt him just pick me up and pull me out," said Giambanco about Rodriguez's rescue efforts. "I didn't know who he was then, but I do now and he definitely saved my life. If it wasn't for William Rodriguez, I wouldn't be here today."

"For me, William is like my brother. He single handedly saved my life."

4th Sub-basement

Quote:

In the 2002 taped statement, Sanchez recalls, at the same time Rodriguez and the others heard the explosion, being in a small sub-level 4 workshop with another man who he only knew by the name of Chino when, out of nowhere, the blast sounded as the two men were cutting a piece of metal.

“It sounded like a bomb and the lights went on and off,” said Sanchez in the tape recording. “We started to walk to the exit and a huge ball of fire went through the freight elevator. The hot air from the ball of fire dropped Chino to the floor and my hair got burned,” said Sanchez in the tape recording. “The room then got full of smoke and I remember saying out loud ‘I believe it was a bomb that blew up inside the building.’ http://www.arcticbeacon.citymaker.co...8131/29079.htm

6th Sub-Basement

Quote:

Deep below the tower, Mike Pecoraro was suddenly interrupted in his grinding task by a shake on his shoulder from his co-worker. "Did you see that?" he was asked. Mike told him that he had seen nothing. "You didn't see the lights flicker?", his co-worker asked again. "No," Mike responded, but he knew immediately that if the lights had flickered, it could spell trouble. A power surge or interruption could play havoc with the building's equipment. If all the pumps trip out or pulse meters trip, it could make for a very long day bringing the entire center's equipment back on-line.

Mike told his co-worker to call upstairs to their Assistant Chief Engineer and find out if everything was all right. His co-worker made the call and reported back to Mike that he was told that the Assistant Chief did not know what happened but that the whole building seemed to shake and there was a loud explosion. They had been told to stay where they were and "sit tight" until the Assistant Chief got back to them. By this time, however, the room they were working in began to fill with a white smoke. "We smelled kerosene," Mike recalled, "I was thinking maybe a car fire was upstairs", referring to the parking garage located below grade in the tower but above the deep space where they were working.

The two decided to ascend the stairs to the C level, to a small machine shop where Vito Deleo and David Williams were supposed to be working. When the two arrived at the C level, they found the machine shop gone.
"There was nothing there but rubble, "Mike said. "We're talking about a 50 ton hydraulic press ? gone!" [Note: "50-tons" refers to the hydraulic capacity of the press, not to its weight. An average 50-ton press weighs about 650 lbs.] The two began yelling for their co-workers, but there was no answer. They saw a perfect line of smoke streaming through the air. "You could stand here," he said, "and two inches over you couldn't breathe. We couldn't see through the smoke so we started screaming." But there was still no answer.

The two made their way to the parking garage, but found that it, too, was gone. "There were no walls, there was rubble on the floor, and you can't see anything" he said. http://www.chiefengineer.org/article.cfm?seqnum1=1029